1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for providing audio advertisements in a computer network. More specifically, this invention relates to a method and apparatus for delivering customized audio advertisements to users in a manner such that users are not required to perform any action nor are they enabled to control the audio stream provided by these audio advertisements.
2. Description of Related Art
For many years, the global retail market has been characterized as a market in which physical products are sold from physical locations. In recent years, however, this dynamic has undergone a significant change in response to the increasing popularity of the Internet and in particular with the increasing popularity of advertising on the Internet. It should be appreciated that the Internet is defined here as a collection of interconnected (public and/or private) networks linked together by a set of standard protocols (such as TCP/IP and HTTP) to form a global, distributed network. While this term is intended to refer to what is now commonly known as the Internet, it is also intended to encompass variations that may be made in the future, including changes and additions to existing standard protocols.
Many Internet websites are supported by business models that rely heavily, if not entirely, on revenue generated from the sale of advertising. A host website devoted to the presentation of news, commentary, product/service descriptions and other forms of content may further include advertisements in the form of graphic or textual banners covering a portion of the displayed page. A visitor to the website can obtain additional information regarding the product or service shown in the advertisement by clicking on a portion of the advertisement. This action generally causes a separate page to be delivered to the visitor containing the additional information. These host websites are paid by sponsors according to the number of clicks made by website visitors on these sponsored advertisements. Therefore, a decline in the number of clicks a particular sponsor advertisement receives directly translates to a loss in revenue for the host website. As the Internet becomes more popular and commercial, these websites are having an increasingly difficult time selling advertisements due to a substantial reduction in most website visitors' willingness to click on these advertisements. A primary reason for this reluctance is the simple fact that website advertisements are now so common that website visitors are no longer enticed to click on them. Thus, as website visitors become more aware of particular types of advertisements they are much more inclined to ignore them.
As the Internet becomes more popular, and as Internet users gain access to the Internet at increasing modem speeds and bandwidth levels, multimedia content on the Internet is becoming more prevalent. This development means that a wider variety of new advertising modalities are becoming available. In response to this availability, many websites are now attempting to add audio advertisements to their online advertisement repertoire; however, there are drawbacks with the way in which current audio advertisements are implemented on the Internet. One problem is that website visitors must launch an audio streaming application in order to listen to an audio program. If the visitor chooses not to launch the audio streaming application, the audio advertisement will not be performed. Even if the visitor does launch the audio streaming application, the visitor can still bypass the audio advertisement altogether by simply scrolling ahead of the advertisement using the control buttons of the audio streaming application. Thus, the visitor can effectively thwart the delivery of the audio advertisement to the detriment of the host website and the sponsor.
A need in the industry therefore exists for a way to enable websites to deliver audio advertisements that cannot be bypassed by the visitor. More specifically, the audio advertisements should not require the visitor to perform any action to enable delivery of the audio advertisement, and the visitor should not be able to otherwise control the manner of delivery of the audio advertisement.